Passing strings to Django URL in template

Question

I think this is probably something very simple, but I can't figure out for the life of me why these urls aren't matching.

My template code looks like this:

<form action="{% url 'view_record' "facility_report" %}" method="post">
{% csrf_token %}

{{ form }}

<input type="submit" value="View Report" name='view' label="Submit">  </form>

The url is then supposed to match this line in my url conf:

url(r'^view_record/((?P<report_type>.+)/)?$', views.view_record, name='view_record'),

What am I missing here? They simply won't match and most of the other questions regarding this are from five years ago when the engine seems to have been a lot more picky with formatting.

Exception Type: NoReverseMatch at /view_record/
Exception Value: Reverse for 'view_record' with arguments '('facility_report',)' and keyword arguments '{}' not found. 1 pattern(s) tried: ['view_record/((?P<report_type>(.*))/)?$']

It's a reverse url matching error, couldn't match '('facility_record',)' after trying the posted url. I'll put up the exact log and view momentarily. — JwM
– JwM, Commented Aug 19, 2015 at 15:20
Ok, added the error message. The view is actually quite large and is unrelated to the error as far as I know. — JwM
– JwM, Commented Aug 19, 2015 at 15:42

knbk · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-19 15:49:42Z

1

The outer group in ((?P<report_type>.+)/)? is a capturing group. Django's url reversal can't handle nested capturing groups, so it will only catch the outer group as a possible argument. Since the first argument does not end in a /, the pattern doesn't match and a NoReverseMatch is thrown.

You can change the outer group to a non-capturing group, and Django will pick up the inner group as a capturing group. That way, the argument does not have to contain the /, as only the inner group is replaced, and the outer group is used as-is.

To create a non-capturing group, start the group with ?::

url(r'^view_record/(?:(?P<report_type>.+)/)?$', views.view_record, name='view_record'),

answered Aug 19, 2015 at 15:49

knbk

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Animesh Sharma · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-19 15:29:56Z

0

You can do something like this:

<form action="{%url 'view_record' 'facility_report'%}" method="post">

And in your urls.py:

url(r'^view_record/(?P<report_type>(.*))/$', views.view_record, name='view_record')

This should send the form to the correct url.

edited Aug 19, 2015 at 15:29

answered Aug 19, 2015 at 15:10

Animesh Sharma

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3 Comments

JwM Over a year ago

I'm trying to avoid hard coding the url if possible.

Animesh Sharma Over a year ago

Updated the answer. The problem was probably due to quotes. Hopefully this should solve your problem.

JwM Over a year ago

It keeps giving me the same error as before. This appears to be the correct format though, I'm really stumped as to why it isn't matching.

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